Giuliani sings praises of planning

WORCESTER — Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani told an audience at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts Wednesday about the importance of having a plan.

Mr. Giuliani said that whether it was tackling welfare reform, homelessness, or crime, it was always important to show people that he knew what he wanted to do.

Mr. Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, was at the Hanover as part of the Worcester Connects distinguished speaker series. He said relentless preparation, teamwork, courage, and risk-taking was what helped him succeed as a mayor in a city that had been experiencing decades of decline.

It also helped to borrow ideas that worked elsewhere, he said. One of those ideas, the "broken windows" theory, dictated that paying attention to smaller crimes as well as bigger ones would have an overall effect on the quality of life in the city. Working with then-Police Commissioner William Bratton, Mr. Giuliani instituted a more analytical, statistics-based approach to crime.

For example, he said, for years politicians would pledge to put more police officers on subway cars, but it never seemed to have an effect on crime rates. When police actually looked at the nature of subway crimes, they found that 75 percent of the crimes were committed on the subway platforms, not in the cars.

"So for 30 years the criminals were beating the heck out of people, stealing their pocketbooks, stealing their wallets, waving to the police going by in the subway cars," Mr. Giuliani said.

He said the year before he took office there were about 2,000 murders in New York; this year, the city is on pace for around 400, Mr. Giuliani said.

The transformation of Times Square represented another change in strategy, he said. Part of that was changing the way police officers thought about what the job actually was.

He really didn't want police arresting people; it was more important to focus on preventing crime. He talked about Times Square's old reputation as something right out of the movie "Taxi Driver." It was full of drug dealers and criminals, he said.

He said one approach that was effective was to beef up the number of horse-mounted police officers, and to combine that with plainclothes officers who would roam crowds when thousands of people went to and from theaters.

The officers on horses would spot the crimes, or even suspicious people, and would communicate to the plainclothes officers, who would stop the crimes.

Combined with zoning changes that pushed pornographic theaters from Times Square, the overall strategy worked, Mr. Giuliani said. The area was redeveloped, and remains a major draw that is now family-friendly, he said.

He said he implemented a plan to reduce the number of people on welfare in New York by creating incentives for welfare workers to help people find jobs and by requiring people applying for welfare benefits to work 20 hours per week part time. He said welfare simply made people dependent on it — it didn't really help them.

"I think I love poor people more than the people who make them dependent," he said.

During a question-and-answer session a young woman thanked Mr. Giuliani for interrupting Ron Paul during a 2007 debate because it cemented her support for Mr. Paul. She called Mr. Giuliani jingoistic.

Mr. Giuliani said he interrupted Mr. Paul because he blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American foreign policy. He said Islamic extremism and a hatred of America for its political, religious, and cultural ideals was what inspired the attacks, not American foreign policy.

A young boy asked Mr. Giuliani what his best and worst memories of Sept. 11 were. Mr. Giuliani talked about losing a priest he confided to in the attacks, and talked about arriving near the World Trade Center to see a man jumping to his death.

He said he felt like he needed the priest with him to help him tell families that their loved ones had been killed in the attacks.

"I had this feeling like I was all alone," Mr. Giuliani said. "That I was all by myself."

But he also talked about more optimistic moments, like when he brought police officers and firefighters with him to appear on "Saturday Night Live" shortly after the attacks, and talked about feeling like the cavalry had arrived when a group of construction workers volunteered at ground zero.

Mr. Giuliani's talk was followed by a panel discussion that included Susan Mailman of Coghlin Electric, who also serves on the board of directors at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce; Chris Sinacola, editorial page editor at the Telegram & Gazette, and the city's chief development officer, Timothy McGourthy.

Mr. Sinacola said what leapt out to him about Mr. Giuliani's remarks was his willingness to borrow good ideas.

Launched last month by the Telegram & Gazette, Worcester Connects — The Center for Community Engagement consists of a website, speaker series and other programs aimed at bringing together people to identify important issues, engage in thoughtful dialogue and promote local events, with a focus on creating solutions and fostering innovation in Worcester County.